


dawnlight

by clementinetea



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, F/F, Pining, Pre-Episode: Revolution of the Daleks, Religious Imagery & Symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:00:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28646430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clementinetea/pseuds/clementinetea
Summary: Months pass.The Doctor doesn’t show. Yaz’s leads, scrawled upon a great many neon sticky notes, all turn out to be dead-ends. Ryan and Graham visit, bearing flasks of tea, tins of biscuits, and equal measures of sympathy and pity in their concerned gazes.Still, Yaz hopes. She prays, she plans. She refuses to let go.
Relationships: The Doctor/Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	dawnlight

**Author's Note:**

> as yaz is a pakistani-british muslim, and i am a pakistani-american muslim, i wanted to write a fic about how she may have dealt with the doctor’s disappearance during those long ten months. so that’s what this is! hope you like it 💓
> 
> (a brief note: muslims usually pray five times a day, and the prayer that takes place around dawn is called fajr. when praying, you recite certain verses from the quran while performing a series of movements, and once you’re through with this, you generally sit down and pray to God for personal things.)

Sometimes Yaz wakes up at dawn to pray Fajr. 

It is a comforting ritual—the calm, familiar movements of her body upon her finely-embroidered prayer rug. The melody of the words she recites inside her mind, inside her heart. The sun peeking in from behind the curtains, painting the walls a soft, balmy orange. Yaz has loved this time of day for as long as she can remember, and she loves it even more, lately.

The Doctor’s absence, more conspicuous with each passing day, stings keenly, and Yaz is grateful for even a moment’s rest from the unbearable longing and sick worry that’s plagued her ever since she got back to Earth and the Doctor never did.

Once she’s finished with the main motions of namaaz, she settles upon her haunches and opens her palms to the sky and puts them together and thinks—

 _Please, Allah. Please. I know she’s out there. I know it. The Doctor would never abandon us, and she’s far too clever to die. I need to find her. Don’t you understand, I_ need _to. Please guide me to her. Please guide her to me._

Yaz pauses for a second, breathes in. The nascent sunlight dances across her skin, blushing bright. She exhales slowly, and lets herself properly speak aloud the words she’s known, deep down, to be true all along.

“I’m in love with her,” she says out loud, her hands still open in prayer. “I’m in love with the Doctor, and I can’t lose her. I just… I just _can’t_. Please, I know you wouldn’t have brought someone like her into my life just to—to, to snatch her away. Please, Allah, reunite me with the woman I love.”

* * *

Months pass.

The Doctor doesn’t show. Yaz’s leads, scrawled upon a great many neon sticky notes, all turn out to be dead-ends. Ryan and Graham visit, bearing flasks of tea, tins of biscuits, and equal measures of sympathy and pity in their concerned gazes.

Still, Yaz hopes. She prays, she plans. She refuses to let go.

* * *

Months pass.

What did the Doctor’s laugh sound like? How did her honey-blonde hair glisten under the strange, pulsing lights of the TARDIS? Did she take two sugars in the chai Yaz sometimes made her, or three? Yaz finds that the details have started to blur in her mind, and it terrifies her.

The woman she loves is out there, somewhere in this galaxy or the next one over, unable to come back, or perhaps refusing to. Yaz misses her something awful.

* * *

Months pass.

It is the middle of winter, now. New Year’s Eve is approaching, she thinks. Or perhaps it’s today. She’d lost track somewhere along the way, and hadn’t cared to catch up. The sun rises late these days, and is a pallid orange when it does—so faint that Yaz sometimes prays in the dark, or by the glow of a lamp. It’s disheartening. She wishes the Doctor were at her side; she’s the type of person that lights up a room. A warm, dizzyingly bright presence one can’t help but reach towards, can’t help but be enraptured by.

In the early days of their separation, Yaz tried not to think too hard about what she’d do if the Doctor were with her again, how she’d react. She’d been too taken by her search, unwilling to waste time by wishing for things just out of her reach. She’d been more focused then, perhaps, and less feverish.

But now, neatly folding up her prayer rug, brushing out the tassels at its end, Yaz allows herself a moment to think about it before she starts her work. If she were to—no, _when_ she finds the Doctor, what will she do?

One part of her thinks she’d tackle her and pull her into a hug. Hold her close and tight and tender.

The other part, the lump in her throat, the ache in her heart, thinks she’d reach forward and give her a shove. For abandoning her. For leaving her to her own devices for so long. Allah may be forgiving and merciful but Yaz… Yaz is only human. Painfully so.

And then she shakes her head, puts those thoughts away. There is research to be done, and paths to chart, and new theories to sort through. It is a waste of time to imagine scenarios she can’t be sure will play out any time soon, the same way she’d decided that picking apart details from her memories with the Doctor was a waste of time as well.

She gets up, clutching her prayer rug in her arms. Outside her window, the winter sun is rising in the sky. Seeing it now, Yaz changes her mind. It isn’t disheartening after all. Glowing with heat and light all those miles away, it’s a little defeated, perhaps, a little weaker than before, but certainly not put out. Unreachable and untouchable, but still there. The same sun Yaz has always been dazzled by.

 _Please, Allah_ , Yaz thinks, echoing her prayers from earlier, an earnest plea. Her skin is bathed in pale peach light. _The Doctor is the best person I know. Let today be the day she comes back to us._

 _And,_ she thinks, _I love her._ The words come easily, ring true. She’s thought them so much over the last year, spoken them to herself and to the heavens each dawn, her legs tucked away beneath her and her palms open in supplication, empty and wanting. _Let today be the day she comes back to_ me _. Ameen._

Yaz watches the sun thaw the night into morning, and begins her work.

**Author's Note:**

> and guess what... it WAS the day that the doctor returned to her! yay!
> 
> thank you for reading! feedback is always appreciated 💓


End file.
